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THE  SEH^HCE 


03^"  the: 


Public  Library  to  the  Community 


BY 


Rev.  S.  H.  Howe,  D.  D., 


NORWICH. 


AN  ADDRESS  BEFORE 


The  Bill  Library  Association,  of  Ledyard,  Conn., 


AUGUST  31,  1904. 


BINGHAM  PRINT,  NEW  LONDON,  CONN. 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2017  with  funding  from 

University  of  Illinois  Urbana-Champaign  Aiternates 


https://archive.org/detaiis/serviCeofpubliclOOhowe 


Next  to  the  planting  of  Christianity  in  a com- 
munity, the  supreme  blessing  that  can  be  be- 
stowed upon  that  community  is  the  provision  of 
a Public  Library.  This  community  is  to  be  felicitated 
upon  the  possession  of  this  supreme  blessing.  Especi- 
ally is  this  community  to  be  felicitated  on  the  fact  that 
this  provision  has  been  made  by  its  own  children.  The 
public  library  is  often  the  gift  of  a stranger.  This  com- 
munity is  happy  in  the  fact  that  it  has  received  its  library 
from  one  whom  it  has  nourished  and  sent  forth  into  the 
world,  and  who  in  the  spirit  of  filial  gratitude  was  willing 
to  accept  the  responsibility  of  providing  for  his  native 
town  what  is  sure  to  be  of  incalculable  benefit  to  this  and 
to  coming  generations. 

The  founding  of  public  libraries  has  become  a dis- 
tinct and  preeminent  form  of  modern  philanthrophy. 
The  public  library  is  the  consummate  flower  and  the 
supreme  expression  of  our  best  civilization.  The  found- 
ers of  public  libraries  are  the  world’s  best  benefactors. 
No  better  public  service  can  be  rendered  than  that  of 
putting  the  world’s  best  thinking  within  the  reach  of  one’s 
fellow  men.  The  library  is  the  sign  of  a true  civilization. 
It  is  said  of  the  African  chief  whom  Livingstone  brought 
to  London  that  he  understood  and  to  a degree  apprecia- 
ted every  thing  he  saw  of  the  shrines  of  religion  and  of 
the  marts  of  trade  in  that  most  splendid  city  of  the  world 
except  its  libraries.  There  was  nothing  in  his  precedent 
experience  that  helped  him  to  understand  a library.  His 


4 


The  Service  of  the  Public  Library  to  the  Community. 

race  and  region  of  the  earth  were  without  a history.  For 
the  rude  thinking  of  his  people  there  was  no  means  of 
preservation ; hence  those  vast  crystallizations  of  the  his- 
tory and  thinking  of  the  world’s  libraries  were  utterly 
unintelligible  to  him.  To  the  savage  who  writes  no 
books  the  world’s  past  and  the  life  and  achievements  of 
contemporary  nations  are  a blank.  But  the  civilized 
man  through  books  gathers  all  the  history,  and  all  the 
best  thinking  of  the  world  to  his  fireside.  Books  en- 
shrining the  best  thought,  and  the  most  inspiring  ex- 
perience of  the  world,  are  the  open  windows  through 
which  man  looks  out  upon  past  and  contemporary  life. 
Books  thus  are  both  the  signs  of  civilization  and  the 
means  unto  civilization  ; the  chief  working  force  unto 
the  highest  civilization.  When  Mathew  Arnold  visited 
us,  he  said  our  country  lacked  interest  for  him  because 
he  found  nothing  finished,  while  the  older  countries  of 
Europe  had  completed  so  many  of  their  tasks.  But  that 
is  the  point  in  which  this  country  is  made  supremely 
interesting  to  us.  We  have  so  many  things  in  hand  ; 
we  are  a nation  in  the  making.  We  are  fashioning  a 
great  people  into  fitness  for  its  mission  to  humanity ; 
and  because  we  are  in  this  formative  state  it  is  that 
libraries  can  take  so  large  a function  to  the  nation. 
Books  are  building  forces  to  the  nation,  without  which 
there  can  be  no  great  national  life.  A reading  people  is 
a progressive  people,  self  contained,  self  controlled,  and 
self  defended,  against  those  anarchic  forces  which  make 
tools  of  the  ignorant.  The  mob  is  never  recruited  from 
the  reading  public.  So  that  it  is  the  instinct  of  the 


5 


The  Service  of  the  Public  Library  to  the  Community. 

noblest  patriotism  that  founds  the  public  library  and 
creates  a reading  public.  A reading  people  will  be  both 
a cultured  and  a patriotic  people.  It  will  not  only 
develop  a spirit  that  holds  them  loyal  to  local  interests, 
but  it  will  develop  universal  sympathies  and  world-wide 
interests.  A good  library  makes  the  reader  a citizen  of 
the  world,  and  the  contemporary  of  the  peoples  of  all 
times  and  ages.  Wide  reading  makes  narrowness  and 
provincialism  impossible ; in  the  act  of  throwing  back 
the  horizon  of  vision  it  widens  and  broadens  all  the 
foundations  of  life.  Wise  reading  universalizes  the 
reader  and  delivers  him  from  the  pent  up  Uticas  to  which 
the  unreading  man  dooms  himself.  A carefully  selected 
library  represents,  preserves  and  perpetuates  the  best 
thinking  and  the  more  important  ongoings  of  the  world. 
A collection  of  books  Carlyle  tells  us  “ is  a real  univer- 
sity.” Books  are  the  truest  preservers  and  immortali- 
zers  of  the  greatest  things  that  men  have  thought  and 
done.  Men  have  painted  their  great  conceptions  in 
pictures  and  carved  them  in  stone,  or  built  them  in  tem- 
ples or  enshrined  them  in  cities,  but  time  at  last  obliter- 
ates their  work.  The  mighty  artists  of  the  ancient  world 
are  only  represented  to  us  in  fragments,  broken  statues, 
and  crumbling  columns,  but  books  preserve  the  people’s 
enacted  history  and  the  noble  thinking  of  their  authors 
forever.  But  for  books  the  woven  fabric  of  these  mighty 
looms  of  time  would  have  been  unravelled  as  fast,  all  but, 
as  they  were  woven  and  would  have  perished.  But  a 
library  like  that  of  Paris  with  its  two  and  a half  millions 
of  volumes,  or  the  British  Museum  with  its  million  and  a 


6 The  Service  of  the  Public  Library  to  the  Community. 

half  volumes,  or  that  at  Washington  with  its  three-quarters 
of  a million,  how  completely  in  these  and  others  of  a 
similar  character  all  the  best  thinking  and  achievements 
of  the  race  are  preserved.  When  you  enter  these  libra- 
ries all  the  great  spirits  of  history  rise  up  to  greet  you 
and  gather  about  you.  All  the  notable  ongoings  of  the 
world  pass  before  you  ; the  world’s  greatest  history  gets 
fresh  enactment ; the  poets  sing  to  you ; the  philosophers 
gather  you  for  the  time  into  the  group  of  their  disciples ; 
the  scientists  draw  aside  the  veils  which  conceal  from 
unpracticed  eyes  the  mysteries  of  nature ; the  artists  dis- 
play the  finely  fashioned  forms  in  which  they  have  given 
shape  to  their  dreams  of  beauty ; the  inventors  put  you 
into  the  secrets  of  all  their  discoveries ; the  travellers  lend 
you  their  eyes  and  let  you  see  the  wonders  proximate  or 
remote  of  continents  you  cannot  yourself  visit.  The  care- 
fully selected  librarian  annihilates  time  and  space  to 
you  ; obliterates  racial  and  continental  boundaries,  breaks 
up  your  narrow  provincialism,  and  makes  you  a citizen 
of  the  world  and  a contemporary  of  every  age.  With 
books  you  can  domesticate  yourself  in  the  age  of  Homer 
or  of  Caesar  of  Abraham  and  of  David  and  of  Jesus. 
The  old  nations  rise  at  the  touch  of  their  wand.  Egypt 
will  come  from  her  rocky  tombs ; Asia  will  become  pop- 
ulous with  the  life  of  her  oldest  periods ; Europe  will  take 
on  the  stir  and  rustle  of  her  steel  clad  armies  or  be  made 
alive  with  the  industries  and  the  activities  of  her  earliest 
ages ; the  old  world  will  be  rehabilitated  in  all  the  forms 
of  its  ancient  life  and  live  again,  for  you,  here  at  the  be- 
ginning of  this  twentieth  century.  When  we  recall  all 


The  Service  of  the  Public  Library  to  the  Community.  7 

the  magnificent  service  books  render  us  in  preserving 
the  past,  in  interpreting  the  present,  in  forecasting  the 
future ; and  in  appealing  to  and  eliciting  the  powers  of 
reflection  and  of  action,  we  need  not  be  surprised  at  the 
reverence  and  the  gratitude  which  the  greatest  men  have 
brought  to  the  great  books  and  their  authors.  “ What  a 
place  to  be  in,”  wrote  Charles  Lamb,  of  the  famous  library 
of  Oxford;  “it  seems  as  though  all  the  souls  of  all  the 
writers  that  have  bequeathed  their  labors  to  these  Bod- 
leans  were  reposing  here  in  some  dormitory  of  the  mid- 
dle state.  I do  not  want  to  handle  the  leaves,  their 
winding  sheets ; I could  as  soon  dislodge  a shade.  I 
seem  to  inhale  learning,  walking  amid  their  foliage,  and 
the  odor  of  their  old  moth-scented  coverings  is  fragrant 
as  the  first  bloom  of  those  sciential  apples  which  grew 
amid  the  happy  orchard.”  Machiavelli  tells  us  in  a letter 
how  after  passing  the  day  at  his  country  house  in  rustic 
outdoor  labor  he  returns  home  to  shut  himself  in  his  study ; 
but  before  making  his  appearance  in  it,  taking  care  out 
of  respect  to  his  authors  to  remove  his  rustic  garb  and 
putting  on  a dress  adapted  to  courts  and  cities.  “ Thus 
fitly  habited,”  he  tells  us,  “ I enter  the  antique  resorts  of 
the  ancients,  where,  being  received,  I feed  on  that  food 
which  alone  is  mine  and  for  which  I was  born,  feeling  no 
annoyance,  forgetting  every  grief,  fearing  neither  pov- 
erty nor  death.”  Thus  totally  immersed  and  lost  to  the 
world  in  his  absorption  with  the  companionship  of  the 
great  spirits  of  all  time.  “ By  my  books,”  writes  a 
scholar,  “ I can  conjure  up  to  vivid  existence  all  the  great 
and  good  men  of  antiquity,  and  for  my  individual  satis- 


8 The  Service  of  the  Public  Tibrary  to  the  Community. 

faction  I can  make  them  act  over  again  the  most  re- 
nowned of  their  exploits.  The  orators  declaim  for  me  ; 
the  historians  recite ; the  poets  sing ; in  a word,  from 
the  equator  to  the  pole  and  from  the  beginning  of  time 
until  now,  by  my  books  I can  fly  whither  I please.”  You 
remember  Southey’s  pathetic  and  reverent  love  for  his 
books,  how  he  would  leave  his  library  with  as  formal  a 
“ Good  Night  ” as  if  he  was  leaving  a company  of 
savants.  And  how  in  advanced  age  and  failing  faculties 
he  would  pass  along  the  shelves  and  alcoves  laying  his 
hands  affectionately  on  the  works  of  favorite  authors  as 
we  do  upon  the  shoulders  of  familiar  friends.  And  this 
is  not  strange  for  among  books  one  is  as  some  one  has 
said  “in  the  very  lap  of  eternity,  among  so  many  divine 
souls.”  “ In  books,”  says  Carlyle,  again,  “ lies  the  soul 
of  the  whole  past,  the  articulate  voice  of  the  past  when 
the  body  and  material  substance  of  it  has  vanished  like 
a dream ; all  that  mankind  has  done,  thought,  gained  or 
been  is  lying  in  magic  preservation  in  the  pages  of 
books.”  And  if  we  have  the  instinct  of  reverence  the 
place  which  contains  them  becomes  a holy  shrine 

“And  the  heart  runs  o’er 
With  silent  worship  of  the  great  of  old, 

• The  dead,  but  sceptered  sovereihs  who  still  rule 
Our  spirits  from  their  urns.”  ^ 

And  this  high  estimate  of  books  is  not  the  preroga- 
tive of  the  great  and  learned  alone,  for  books  take  the 
same  office  to  the  humblest  that  they  take  to  the  great. 
The  great  authors  do  not  look  you  up  in  the  books  of 
heraldry  or  scrutinize  the  carvings  about  your  door  lin- 
tels, or  ask  questions  about  your  family  history  before 


The  Service  of  the  Public  Library  to  the  Community.  9 

they  will  enter  your  doors  and  lay  claim  to  your  leisure 
moments.  The  great  authors  are  not  reserved  in  their 
service  or  exclusive  in  the  selection  of  their  company. 
No  matter  what  be  our  setting  in  life,  all  the  master  spirits 
of  history  will  come  in  shining  garments  and  gather  for 
brotherly  fellowship  with  us  about  our  evening  lamp. 
Your  life  may  be  one  of  drudgery ; you  may  be  grinding 
in  the  hard  mills  of  routine ; you  may  be  treading  the 
dullest  paths  of  monotony  and  commonplace ; you  may 
have  hardship  in  your  lot  and  trouble  may  be  dogging 
your  steps  like  a sleuth-hound,  but  if  you  have  cultivated 
that  easily  acquired  habit  of  reading,  you  can  slip  your 
tether  and  get  away  from  it  all  when  your  evening  lamp 
is  lighted  and  the  work  of  the  day  is  done.  If  you  will- 
ingly invite  them  you  can  have  the  company  of  all  the 
inspired  and  inspiring  spirits  of  history,  and  if  you  will 
only  allow  them,  they  will  snatch  you  away  from  your 
unsavory  environment  and  bear  you  away  to  worlds  new 
to  you.  The  historians,  touching  the  past  with  their 
wizard’s  wand,  will  bring  all  the  world’s  yesterdays  back 
again,  the  scientists  will  show  you  a fairy  land  in  these 
fields  of  nature  which  are  commonplace  to  you ; the 
philosophers  will  relieve  you  of  the  necessity  of  the  orig- 
inal initiative,  and  reason  out  for  you  the  difficult  prob- 
lems of  life  and  destiny ; the  discoverers  and  explorers  will 
conduct  you  to  the  heart  of  distant  continents  ; you  can 
travel  with  Livingstone  and  Nansen  and  Burton  over 
lands  you  can  never  see.  In  a word,  with  a taste  for 
reading  acquired,  a public  library  at  your  command,  and 
a little  leisure  at  your  service,  and  the  monotony  and 


lO  The  Service  of  the  Public  Library  to  the  Commnnity. 

the  dreary  solitude  of  existence  are  at  an  end.  A man 
who  can  make  daily  companions  of  Shakespeare  and 
Milton  and  of  Dante,  of  Scott  and  of  Thackery,  of 
Tennyson  and  of  Browning,  of  Agassiz  and  of  Tyndal, 
of  Gibbon  and  of  Prescott,  should  not  complain  of  the 
monotony  and  humdrum  of  existence.  Give  me  a book 
and  a June  day  said  Emerson  and  I can  make  the  pomp  of 
kings  ridiculous.  We  may  have  rude  surroundings  and 
we  may  be  annoyed  by  the  shallow  coarse  talk  of  the 
people  around  us,  but  nothing  can  hinder  us  from  listen- 
ing to  the  pure  English  undefiled  of  Addison  or  the  stately 
speech  of  Milton  or  the  liquid  legend  music  of  Tennyson. 
We  may  live  under  a lowly  roof ; our  clothes  may  be  the 
worse  for  wear ; our  tables  may  be  spread  with  little  that 
would  tempt  the  appetites  of  the  rich  Dives’  or  the  haughty 
Sir  Gold  Dusts  of  the  world,  but  with  the  opened  doors 
of  the  public  library  nothing  can  prevent  us  from  having 
the  constant  and  familiar  society  of  all  the  wise  savants, 
the  singing  poets  and  the  profound  philosophers  who  have 
long  found  their  niches  among  the  immortals. 

And  then  the  amount  of  time  at  your  command  is  not 
so  great  a consideration  as  at  first  thought  might  appear. 
The  odd  minutes  which  many  of  us  throw  away,  appro- 
priated for  reading  will  make  all  the  difference  between 
a cultivated  and  an  uncultivated  man.  Many  men  in  our 
country  have  been  growing  rich  on  margins.  And  many 
a wise  man  has  before  now  become  Croesus  rich  in  intel- 
lectual wealth  by  utilizing  his  fragments  of  leisure.  The 
catalogue  is  a long  one  of  men  deprived  of  outward  ad- 
vantages who  have  become  intellectual  millionaires  by 


The  Service  of  the  Public  Library  to  the  Community, 


II 


knowing  how  to  lay  their  hands  on  a muscle  making 
book,  and  to  avail  themselves  of  a tallow  candle.  Books 
read  in  the  intervals  of  toil  have  saved  to  the  world  some 
of  the  great  spirits  of  history.  We  should  probably  have 
had  no  Abraham  Lincoln  if  there  had  been  no  books 
accessible  to  him  in  those  brief  intervals  between  the 
day’s  hard  labor  and  the  hours  of  sleep.  School  and 
college  were  impossibilities,  but  a good  book  of  history 
or  of  law  and  a few  pine  knots  on  the  hearth  did  the 
work  of  college  professors.  Benjamin  Franklin  made 
himself  the  American  Socrates  by  utilizing  his  odd 
moments  in  reading.  Horace  Greely  and  Elihu  Burritt 
would  have  remained  unknown  country  boys  had  they 
not  formed  this  excellent  habit  of  using  fruitfully  their  odd 
moments.  Many  a poor  boy  by  having  his  appetite  for 
knowledge  whetted  in  one  of  the  alcoves  of  a library  has 
become  in  good  time  an  intellectual  capitalist ; and  your 
public  library  will  be  an  exception  if  it  does  not  kindle 
the  fire  of  inspiration  in  many  a young  soul  which  would 
have  remained  unevoked  but  for  the  appeal  which  these 
books  will  furnish.  A soul  undreaming  of  the  power  in 
latency  within  him  comes  in  contact  with  the  great 
thinkers  of  the  world  and  he  becomes  himself  a thinker 
and  a force  along  some  line  of  noble  achievement.  It  is 
to  the  wise  use  of  these  margins  of  time  to  which  I would 
call  you.  Keep  a good  strong  book  at  your  elbow  for 
these  odds  and  ends  of  time  ; if  you  do  this  it  will  make 
all  the  difference  between  two  or  three  great  books  going 
into  you  every  year  you  live  and  those  books  remaining 
unread  and  unknown.  We  spend  our  leisure  in  conver- 


12  The  Service  of  the  Public  Library  to  the  Community. 

sation,  but  our  conversation  will  be  cheap  and  poor  if  we 
never  read.  Why  a man  will  sacrifice  his  evenings  in 
idle  savorless  talk  at  the  store  or  the  shop  or  wherever 
garrulous  idlers  herd  ; or  why  women  will  seek  or  tole- 
rate the  company  of  aimless  chatterers  for  the  purpose  of 
having  their  leisure  squandered  when  they  could  enrich 
their  minds  and  elevate  the  level  of  their  thinking  and 
their  living  by  reading,  is  a thing  past  our  divining. 
Some  of  us  here  who  are  most  in  the  companionship  of 
books  could  surprise  you  with  what  we  have  been  able 
to  accomplish  by  working  up  these  odds  and  ends  of 
time.  Some  of  us  have  read  scores  of  books  by  reading 
but  fifteen  minutes  a day  at  them,  and  if  this  library  is 
leading  some  one  who  has  not  read  extensively  to  devote 
his  scraps  of  time  to  these  immortal  books  that  have 
stirred  the  intellectual  inertia  of  the  centuries,  it  will  in 
the  end  make  all  the  difference  between  a cultivated  man 
and  a man  who  accepts  stark  ignorance  as  an  imagined 
fatality.  The  habit  of  absorbing  three  or  four  great  books 
every  year  will  go  far  toward  making  the  gentleman  or 
lady  of  the  most  real  and  genuine  kind.  And  then  the 
habit  formed  and  adhered  to,  you  will  find  yourself 
making  leisure  and  cultivating  new  crops  of  odds  and 
ends  of  time  for  your  favorite  book,  you  will  find  it  pos- 
sible as  you  now  think  it  is  not,  to  still  the  whir  of  life’s 
shuttles  in  order  to  find  for  yourself  opportunity  of  self 
cultivation  through  companionship  with  books.  We  do 
not  live  by  bread  alone  after  all,  and  it  is  worth  while  to 
get  away  from  the  question  of  bread  in  sufficiency  or 
excess  to  live  more  than  all  of  us  do  in  those  higher  arches 


The  Service  of  the  Public  Library  to  the  Commu7iity.  13 

of  the  brain,  and  to  remember  as  we  well  may  that  life 
has  not  borne  its  utmost  fruits  if  it  leaves  us  at  that  far 
frontier  of  a coming  life  with  every  thing  to  learn  and  with 
the  most  important  things  to  do. 

Then  to  this  habit  of  reading,  what  shall  be  fur- 
nished ? The  question  is  sure  to  recur,  what  shall  we 
read?  And  this  is  vital,  for  the  books  people  care  to 
read  are  going  to  determine  culture  and  character. 
People  are  never  better  than  the  books  they  read  habit- 
ually, and  from  choice.  Their  reading  is  indicative  of 
the  man.  We  form  our  opinions  of  people  by  the  kind 
of  reading  they  do.  It  was  a noble  speech  of  Erasmus 
who  said,  “ when  I have  a little  money  I buy  books ; if 
there  is  any  left  I buy  clothes.”  But  it  is  important  what 
books  we  buy  and  what  books  we  care  to  read.  Wise 
discrimination  in  selection  is  of  the  first  importance  or 
else  like  the  sailors  of  Ulysses  we  may  be  cheated  into 
taking  bags  of  wind  when  we  think  we  are  getting  sacks 
of  treasure.  For  a useless  and  unprofitable  book  has 
by  this  lack  of  discrimination,  crowded  out  a useful  and 
profitable  book.  So  that  in  book  reading  as  in  sport- 
manship  it  is  safe  and  wise  to  make  for  the  largest  game. 
We  do  not  care  to  shoot  field  mice  when  we  can  bring 
down  the  lordly  moose  or  the  agile  graceful  deer.  We 
do  not  gather  sandgrains  when  we  can  fill  our  sacks  with 
gold  and  costly  pearls. 

Patrons  of  a well-selected  library  perhaps  need  less 
guarding  against  deception,  since  its  shelves  are  sup- 
posed to  be  reserved  for  the  great  books  of  the  world. 
And  yet  is  a good  rule  to  make,  and  a good  habit  to  form. 


14  The  Service  of  the  Public  Library  to  the  Community. 

to  read  only  or  chiefly  the  great  books  of  the  world. 
We  should  be  as  exclusive  and  guarded  here  as  some  of 
us  are  of  our  social  connections.  We  do  well  to  submit 
our  minds  mainly  to  the  great  books ; to  listen  to  the 
great  teachers  of  the  race  ; that  choice  company  that  have 
made  good  their  unchallenged  right  to  place  in  the  world’s 
Valhalla.  There  is  no  risk  here  if  you  take  the  deliber- 
ate verdict  of  mankind.  The  vast  majority  of  books  that 
issue  from  the  press  are  left  as  drift  wood  on  the  shore  ; 
but  there  are  others  that  like  mighty  ships  keep  in  the 
deep  channel  and  go  full  sail  down  the  river  of  time, 
and  for  that  reason,  time  is  an  important  determinative 
factor.  How  long  has  that  book  been  off  the  presses  is 
a good  question  to  ask  and  we  are  wise  if  we  wait  for 
the  printer’s  ink  to  dry.  Emerson  said  when  a new  book 
came  out  he  read  an  old  one.  “Old  wood  to  burn,”  is 
somebody’s  saying,  “old  wine  to  drink,  old  friends  to 
trust ; old  books  to  read.”  New  books  are  issuing  from 
the  press  that  would  fill  St.  Paul’s  Cathedral  to  the  dome 
with  the  yearly  output,  but  is  it  worth  while  to  spend 
time  over  last  week’s  issue  of  the  big  publishing  houses 
when  you  can  read  all  the  great  and  tried  masters  who 
deceive  no  one.  You  need  not  care  for  foothills  when 
you  can  have  Mt.  Blanc  or  the  Andes.  Some  of  the 
books  that  went  like  wild  fire,  two  or  three  years  ago, 
nobody  is  reading  now ; while  the  old  kings  of  the 
intellectual  world  are  ruling  their  big  empire  right  down 
the  centuries.  Read  then  chiefly,  if  not  only,  the  great 
books  of  the  world ; the  great  poems,  the  great  biogra- 
phies, the  great  essays,  the  great  dramas,  the  best  works 


Tke  Service  of  the  Public  Library  to  the  Community.  15 

of  fiction,  for  the  good  is  the  enemy  of  the  best,  if  it  ex- 
cludes the  best.  Therefore  keep  the  cells  of  the  brain 
for  the  best.  A great  history  is  worth  the  pains  of  slow 
and  patient  reading.  A notable  preacher  in  this  country 
was  accustomed  to  read  Gibbon’s  Rise  and  Fall  of  the 
Roman  Empire  once  every  year.  Great  biographies 
should  be  studied  if  for  no  other  reason  than  that  they 
enable  us  to  keep  company  with  the  greatest  and  noblest 
spirits  of  the  world.  The  life  of  Arnold  or  of  Johnson  or 
of  Scott  or  of  Tennyson  or  of  Gladstone  putsone  in  touch 
with  the  best  contemporary  life  of  the  period  in  which 
they  live.  Read  also  the  best  essays.  It  will  put  a new  sky 
over  your  heads  and  a remoter  horizon  line  about  your 
life  if  you  read  thoroughly  the  essays  of  Bacon,  of 
Addison,  of  Macauly,  of  Carlyle  and  of  Emerson.  Read 
the  best  poetry,  the  works  of  the  authors  I have  already 
mentioned  and  it  will  take  away  the  taste  for  the  fifth 
and  tenth-rate  productions  of  those  who  will  never  come 
so  much  as  in  sight  of  the  mighty  Olympus  where  these 
great  immortals  hold  their  peaceful  and  unchallenged 
court.  And  then  read  only  the  great  works  of  fiction. 
And  no  where  do  the  guards  and  danger  signals  need  to 
be  planted  so  thickly  as  here ; for  fiction  has  become  the 
staple  of  the  reading  of  a great  and  growing  multitude ; 
so  that  our  libraries  find  their  chief  constituency  in  our 
fiction  readers,  till  we  are  almost  ready  to  believe  that 
the  intellect  of  the  day  is  being  swamped  in  the  meshes 
of  story  reading.  Believing  as  some  of  us  do  that  ‘‘  no 
noble  generation  of  men  and  women  have  ever  been  or 
ever  will  be  reared  on  fiction  ” and  that  to  those  whose 


1 6 The  Service  of  the  Public  Library  to  the  Commu7iity. 

appetites  have  been  jaded  by  piquant  stories,  the  g^reat 
realities  of  life  and  the  great  movements  of  the  world  will 
inevitably  pall,  it  seems  time  to  sound  a note  of  warning. 
We  certainly  shall  rear  no  great  heroic  figures,  produce 
no  heroic  characters  and  raise  up  no  great  public  citizens 
out  of  those  whose  staple  reading  is  the  popular  fiction 
of  the  day. 

And  yet  amidst  this  sea  of  froth  and  foam  and 
whipped  syllabub  which  comes  from  the  press  and  in  the 
presence  of  the  influence  of  this  enervating  reading  it 
must  be  acknowledged  that  really  great  works  of  fiction 
have  noble  offices  to  take.  Mr.  Gladstone  thought  that 
the  battle  of  faith  and  unbelief  is  to  be  fought  out  on  the 
field  of  romance.  It  is  easily  believed  that  certain  great 
evils  can  be  most  effectually  overthrown  by  the  raking 
fires  of  these  masked  batteries,  and  that  works  of  fiction 
will  be  in  the  future,  as  in  exceptional  instances  in  the 
past,  a potent  force  for  helpful  and  beneficent  reform. 
Some  such  works  have  been  written  in  our  time  and 
launched  with  telling  force  against  some  of  the  menacing 
evils  of  the  world.  But  in  our  reading  we  had  better  not 
waste  time  in  pure  experimentation.  We  would  do  well 
to  keep  close  to  the  great  masters  of  fiction.  Some  cul- 
tured people  do  not  think  it  time  misspent  to  read  Scott 
from  cover  to  cover  every  year.  There  are  many 
acknowledged  masters  that  may  be  allowed  to  keep  their 
grip  upon  you  while  the  new  sensations  have  their  run 
and  their  final  destination  in  the  rubbish  shutes.  And  at 
l)est  we  would  not  want  to  make  fiction  the  staple  of  our 
reading  but  accept  it  as  the  thin  layer  of  masonry  be- 


The  Service  of  the  Public  Library  to  the  Community . 17 

tween  the  thick  blocks  of  granite  and  porphyry,  since 
much  fiction  makes  the  dreamer,  rather  than  the  man  of 
alertness  and  intellectual  brawn  and  vigor.  We  use 
fiction  to  help  us  in  the  study  of  life  and  yet  life  itself  is 
our  real  study.  So  most  of  all,  read  books  that  will  help 
you  to  live.  The  test  of  a book  is  its  influence  on  life. 
The  books  that  inspire  you  to  live  btioyantly  and  strong  ; 
that  elevate  your  ideals,  that  purify  your  heart,  that  help 
you  to  find  the  higher  uses  of  life ; the  books  that  add 
definitely  to  your  knowledge,  and  that  increase  your 
power  to  cope  with  the  adversities  of  existence ; the 
books  that  make  you  optimistic  and  hopeful ; that  help 
you  to  cast  away  distrust  and  doubt  and  enable  you  to 
live  unselfishly  and  nobly  and  helpfully  toward  the 
world.  These  are  the  books  to  read. 

And  while  you  are  using  books  to  this  end  do  not 
forget  that  there  is  one  Book  that  towers  above  all  others 
as  a veritable  Himalaya,  the  Book  which  has  been  the 
root  out  of  which  whole  literatures  have  been  evolved, 
and  has  given  rise  to  the  greatest  thinking  the  human 
mind  has  ever  done  ; the  book  that  beyond  all  others  has 
taught  men  how  to  live  and  to  die  victoriously.  You 
will  find  in  it  the  greatest  history,  the  loftiest  philosophy 
and  the  highest  reach  of  poetry  to  which  the  human  mind 
has  ever  soared.  The  Book  which  Charles  Dickens  tells 
us  is  the  “ eternal  Book  for  all  the  weary  and  the  heavy 
laden,  for  all  the  wretched,  fallen,  neglected  of  this  earth ; 
the  story  of  Him  who  through  the  round  of  human  life 
had  sweet  compassion  for  all  the  neglected  of  this  earth  ; 
the  story  of  Him  who  had  sweet  compassion  for,  and  in- 


i8  The  Service  of  the  Public  Library  to  the  Community. 

terest  in  its  every  stage,  its  every  suffering,  its  every  sor- 
row.” The  Book  I may  add  that  has  beyond  all  others 
beside  made  men  heroic  and  brave  to  do  and  endure ; 
which  has  made  nations  strong  and  races  virile  and  indi- 
vidual character  manly  and  saintly.  The  reading  that 
starts  from  or  leads  up  to  this  Book  will  be  broadening, 
enlightening ; the  library  that  leads  up  to  this  greatest  of 
books  will  be  beneficent  in  its  influence  and  lasting  in  its 
benefits  to  the  community  in  which  it  is  planted. 


